Operational management of contractual and transactional interactions between buyers, sellers and others involved in the exchange of products for purposes of commerce have typically been labor and time intensive. Generally, the processes of managing transactions between business entities have been unduly burdensome and inefficient. The various parties involved in a transaction typically change proposed terms and aspects of a proposed transaction on a concurrent and/or iterative basis. Data representing each corporate participant's view of the interaction is stored across one or more enterprise systems managed by that particular corporate participant and not accessible by other corporate participants. Consequently, it can be difficult to know which draft document represents the most current information about the interaction and whether the parties to the transaction have a common understanding. Where the corporate participants have communicated electronically (e.g., via email and Internet-enhanced communications), these document-synchronization difficulties have been compounded by an increased number of co-existing draft documents being viewed by the parties. Commercial transactions then become more difficult as business entities attempt to perform business with each other.
A typical commercial interaction between a seller offering a product and a buyer desiring to acquire that product moves through multiple steps. First, the buyer and the seller negotiate an agreement as to the price the buyer will pay. When this agreement covers an extended period of time it is typically formalized in a contract or catalog. Contracts and catalogs are typically maintained by the seller in a seller-managed computer system that is separate from the computer system or systems which the seller uses to accept orders, fulfill orders and generate invoices. When the invoice system used by the seller to bill the buyer has a different price file than is resident in the seller-managed contract system, pricing exceptions will occur which will increase the cost of the interaction because buyer and seller personnel will have to resolve the differences before the transaction can be completed. The problem can be compounded when the buyer loads the current contract prices into its procurement system for determination of whether the seller is billing correctly during the pre-payment order/invoice reconciliation process. All of seller's invoicing systems could be representing the current contract while one or more of the buyer's systems still represent an expired or not yet active contract. Some or all of the seller's invoicing systems could be representing expired or not yet active contracts while all of the buyer's procurement systems are up to date. The number of combinations of events leading to transaction misunderstandings and disagreements contribute significantly to the overall cost of settling for the exchange of products. As a further complication, the contract contents, the order, the invoice and other documents representing the transaction, and which are required to settle the transaction, often only exist in paper form for access to the individuals attempting to resolve exceptions. Further, the data that does exist electronically is often scattered across numerous applications such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, purchasing, accounting, buyer or seller group, shipping, and receiving. Moreover, where each buyer does business with many sellers and each seller does business with many buyers, tracking such drafts becomes increasingly more difficult.
One type of transaction for which the above difficulties apply is a shipping transaction. Traditional approaches have lead to many challenges to managing transactions between one shipper and one carrier. Typically, however, there are multiple carriers and shippers involved in multiple transactions, which makes the management process more complex, and that much more time-consuming and inefficient. The process is labor intensive in that it relies on physically matching the hard copy of a bill of lading (BOL) for proof of delivery with the hard copy invoice and then trying to apply the terms of a hard copy contract to calculate whether the invoice amount is proper to pay. Exceptions need to be communicated to the trading partner, often involving faxing or mailing paper copies of support materials. Responses to requests for information often result in more paper copies with hand-written annotations that alter the understanding of how the transaction actually transpired. The ensuing series of repetitive and time consuming steps are a source of additional operational expense for both buyer and seller. Also, each BOL is often rated multiple times by multiple parties creating excessive redundancy.
Due to such difficulties and convoluted processes, traditional shipment transaction management systems are highly susceptible to billing errors and fraud. For example, there has been no connection between the delivery of goods and when the shipper is billed for delivery. This may result in double billing, no billing at all, or overbilling the shipper for freight delivery charges. Also, auditing errors may occur, which results in incorrect billing or payment. In addition, the carrier waits a disproportionately long time for payment while the invoice is being audited and/or disputed. For example, traditionally, a delivery takes about five days whereas payment takes about forty-five days. This delay adversely affects the carrier's working capital resources which, in turn, raises the carrier's cost of doing business and raises the prices the carrier must charge to earn the economic return required to remain in business.
Additional costs arise as a result of the existing inefficiencies. Many of the costs are individually small, but very large in the aggregate. For example, the carrier incurs administrative costs including: the cost to create and deliver the initial invoice, costs of resolving billing disputes, costs of providing a signed copy of the BOL to the shipper, and costs of posting accounts receivable. The shipper incurs similar administrative costs to receive the bill, match it with the BOL, manually check the contracts to determine if pricing is correct, generate and deliver payment to the carrier.
Another challenge present in many traditional systems involves the incompatibility of product and service (hereinafter the terms “product” and/or “service” are collectively referred to as “product”) reference identifiers between buyers, sellers and other related entities (e.g., a distributor or group purchase organization (GPO)). When multiple reference identifiers are used, tracking and reconciling business transactions become more difficult. The complexity of modern business has also lead to expensive administrative costs associated with commercial transactions. Administrative costs include personnel, software, hardware, and entire departments created for managing commercial transactions to ensure accurate and timely billing and payment. Even with the expensive administrative cost, most transactions have typically relied on paper as the means of communicating within and between corporations. Paper copies are expensive and difficult to track and are not simultaneously accessible from geographical disparate locations. Disputes can also occur with various paper copies circulating within and between corporations (e.g., price discrepancies, short pays, and lengthy price disputes). These disputes can result in burdensome and lengthy negotiations, further frustrating both the buyer and seller. Additionally, the disputes can lead to a deterioration or possibly extinction of the relationship between the buyer and seller. Further costs are incurred if new buyers or sellers need to be found.
Most industries are quite competitive and any cost savings are therefore important. Administrative costs are targeted for reduction as no revenue is directly generated from administrative functions. However, administrative costs associated with commercial transactions have been difficult to reduce in the current business environment with widely diffused data.
The above and other difficulties in the management and coordination of business transactions have presented administrative and cost challenges to business entities on both the buyer and seller ends of transactions, as well as those involved in other aspects of such transactions, including distributors and buying organizations (such as GPOs) who negotiate contracts on behalf of a large, disparate group of buyers.